Page content

The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations' Millennium General Assembly

Photos courtesy of the Smithsonian American Art Museum

Photo courtesy of the Smithsonian American Art Museum

Part of the passage in the reference to
Corinthians in Hampton's photo speaks of "a man in Christ
...caught up to the third heaven ...whether in the body, or out of the
body, I cannot tell: God knoweth."

Tucked away in a softly lit Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk
Art Museum alcove, the foil-covered hosannas of St. James, Director for Special
Projects for the State of Eternity—as janitor James Hampton styled
himself—shimmer in cascades of reflected glory. A night employee of the General
Services Administration in Washington, Hampton labored after work in a rented
alleyway stable, fashioning from materials scavenged on the job, bought in
secondhand stores, and found on the streets a symmetrical three-tiered
testimony to "The Revelation of Saint John the Devine." He intended, when he
was done, to open a storefront ministry with the 180-component liturgical
assembly for its centerpiece. Begun about 1950, the toil went on fourteen years
in the hours after midnight.

Born the son of an itinerant,
self-ordained minister and gospel singer in 1909 at Elloree, South Carolina,
Hampton migrated when he was nineteen to the District of Columbia. There he had
visions, which he recorded. The earliest note of one that survives reads: "This
is true that the great Moses the giver of the 10th commandment appeared in
Washington DC, April 11, 1931."

Hampton lived with a brother and
worked as a short-order cook until the army drafted him in 1942 for the Second
World War, made him a carpenter, and sent him, among other places, to the
Pacific. On Guam, he built a small shrine-like object, perhaps a precursor,
which he incorporated in his later effort. Hampton returned to Washington in
1945, and moved into a boarding house. He began a career with the GSA in 1946,
when he recorded another vision: "This is true that on October 2, 1946, the
great Virgin Mary and the Star of Bethlehem appeared over the nation's
capital."

Photo courtesy of the Smithsonian American Art Museum

The "No. 1" crown Hampton fashioned for The
Throne of the Third Heaven shrine bears a
citation from Revelations 7:3, in which one angel tells four others: "Hurt not
the earth, neither the sea, nor the trees, till we have sealed the servants of
our God in their foreheads."

Photo courtesy of the Smithsonian American Art Museum

This tablet records the date of
a vision in which Hampton saw "the great Moses" appear in Washington, D.C. Much
of the rest of the inscription is composed in Hampton's secret alphabet, but it
appears he had the Ten Commandments in mind.

He stayed in the boarding house
the rest of his life. He never married—said he couldn't find his "Holy
woman"—but he believed he had the best companionship for which a man could ask.
God, Hampton said, instructed him each night as work on The Throne of the
Third Heaven of the Nations' Millennium General Assembly advanced toward the dawn.

The title of the fabrication may
reveal Hampton's vision of the heaven of the sky, the heaven of the planets,
and the heaven of the Almighty, and the gathering of the nations foretold for
when Christ returned at the end of days. Then, according to the New Testament,
the deity, attended by angels, is to appear on a throne to reign over the New
Jerusalem.

At bottom a maroon-cushioned easy
chair, the monarch's seat, with the biblical injunction "Fear Not" at its
crest, stands on a three-foot-high wooden platform perhaps intended to resemble
the stage or sanctuary of a church. Flanking slanted-top pulpits suggest
Hampton was preparing places for preachers or speakers in his tabernacle. There
also are mercy seats, pedestals, plaques, altars, and offertory tables, some
bearing Bible names and passages.

Hampton built his masterwork of
metallic foils, paper, plastic, strips of metal cut from coffee cans, jelly
jars, flower vases, lightbulbs, wood furniture, cardboard, conduit, glue, tape,
tacks, and pins. The foil-wrapped bulbs are a poetic reference to Jesus as the
light of the world. When dust settled on the objects, Hampton recovered them
instead of cleaning.

Photo courtesy of the Smithsonian American Art Museum

The stand is from the first rank of the three-tiered assembly, its foil-wrapped electric bulbs an
apparent poetic reference to the deity as the light of the world.

He said of his project, "That is
my life. I'll finish before I die." There were, however, leftover pieces and
spare parts when he passed away, never having opened his church, in 1964. No
one knew of Hampton's creation save his landlord, who took possession of it all
in lieu of back rent. He also got a collection of encoded writings, kept in
ring binders or on clipboards, penned by Hampton in a secret alphabet, that
have yet to be deciphered. Among them is The Book of the 7 Dispensations by
St. James, each page of which ends with the
word "Revelation."
Colonial Williamsburg has had
Hampton's handiwork—he called it a monument to Jesus—on extended loan from the
Smithsonian American Art Museum. The AARFAM installation is to close in the
summer of 2004, so there are but a few months left to see the present exhibit.

Photo courtesy of the Smithsonian American Art Museum

The centerpiece of Hampton's creation, a winged throne crowned by the
injunction "Fear Not" bears a series of messages of Hampton's invention.